Thank you everyone for all your responses. I think everything you guys said is very helpful. I will definitely explore the eyesight thing. Actually ds is colorblind and was tested for it last year but his dad took him and isn't sure what tests the eye doctor did. I did wonder that but then yesterday he read a Clifford book which had smaller print and he was fine. There were only about 1-2 lines per page though.
I am starting to teach him some reading strategies. Last week I gave him a ruler to put under the sentence as a guide and he really seemed to read better with it and will now ask for it.
Lucounu, I did think that perhaps I should give him some phonics instruction. I haven't really given him any instruction so I think he has learned reading primarily by sight and when he doesn't know a word I just tell him and he memorizes it. This method however leaves him a bit dependent on me though. I was thinking that the K teacher would teach the strategies to him so it would give him something to do in K but perhaps the timing is just too late. As a teacher I usually try to lessen my students' frustrations by teaching self-correcting strategies as they learn to read but in my son's case it didn't really work out that way. I guess in a way I thought that teaching him these things would be pushing him.
Camom, I did try the relax and let him take the lead in reading. I only started to make him read more than a sentence in the last few days. The last two days it was a bit more of a struggle but today he was much more ready to read and read the entire book by himself with no protests. My ds is a child of routine. He doesn't like new things but once he is familiar with something he likes to stick to it so perhaps it won't be such a struggle after all.
I am going to try several different strategies everyone here has suggested. He is just five and I'm sure I'll learn how he operates on a "school" level as the years go on. I'm still not sure if it is a perfectionist thing. I usually never know what he's thinking or feeling. Ds is not a sharer of feelings and thoughts.
I did observe his swim class today. I had observed him also at the beginning of camp and again several weeks into camp and he was advancing quite well and loving it. He really was trying so hard at it. However when I observed him this time I noticed that after 7 weeks of swimming lessons at camp, his swimming has actually not progressed at all! His best friend is in his swim class it is just the two of them. The swim director lets them be in a class together because she knows they are best friends. His friend is scared of the water and was several level behind my ds. I didn't think this was any big deal since they only get to be together during camp so I didn't make them go into different classes. I noticed today that his friend did get better but ds is swimming is now at exactly the same level as his friend's! He literally waits for his friend to catch up to him during all the exercises and follows his friend's movements to the T! So anyways, I just don't know what is going on with this kid. Maybe he just wants to be like everyone else. He is just starting to notice differences between him and some of his peers.
